


Thoughts and/or Feelings

by fairytalehearts



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 16:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairytalehearts/pseuds/fairytalehearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda of sorts to "The Rundown Job" spoilers for the finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thoughts and/or Feelings

_Eliot_

Bullets would normally stop a person from pursing their target.

Not stop _him_ , but at least slow, but he can’t slow down now. It only takes one shot to cripple Parker or blow Hardison’s brains out. The survival of the rest of them depends on her ability to move and his neurons firing in his brain. He sees a million scenarios in his head, knows exactly where a bullet can do the most damage. In a confined space like this one bullet could take out both of them with the glass shattering or Hardison being a hero-he can't think about it now, when he needs to act. He reacts and contracts and walking is hard enough when he knows exactly how much blood he's losing. 

_This is why you always eject the clip_.

If your opponent loses his upper hand, then eliminating them is so much easier. Hardison has seen him disarm more people and he should know better, but he'd have to yell at him later. When they're all back in Portland. If he can just go a few more steps. He just has to keep going and take this guy out because he couldn’t live with himself if he had his friend’s blood on his hands. He already had enough.

‘We do the things they can’t’ echoes in his ears and then he's finally close enough to punch.

_He strikes._

**

_Parker_

Parker knows.

There’s three ways this turns out: They’re all going to die, but save the city. They live but the country dies. Or she and Eliot do what they always do: the hard decision. They needed to save Hardison. Nate and Sophie could find the world’s second best thief or second best- whatever it was that Eliot is called or maybe the third best thief-She knows the look is coming before she hops onto the train. There will be a time, an out, where she can save Hardison. She and Eliot will agree.

Sometimes she thinks he forgets that she is a thief. A master thief. _The Master Thief._   They study her heists in white collar divisions the world over. She is _always_ stealing things but faced with the only person who’s stolen anything from her dying, she can’t. She won’t. He's got her heart and she can't live without that.

There are three watches, two bracelets and a three diamonds on her. She also picked up a screw driver from that van. She has a picture of Sophie and piece of paper from Nate, and one of the watches was Eliot’s. She is a thief and she has her sentiments and she smells like Hardison’s cologne. And if this was her time then she was going down like a thief. With her haul, her prized possessions and no regrets.

_After her kiss, she runs._

He won’t figure it for another two microseconds, he is such a boy sometimes that she loves him a little more for that. The kiss was a good distraction. When he does she’s already running as fast as she can. He’s screaming at her and as fast as he can run she’s faster, the distance between them growing. Not that he could stop her, she's somehow gotten a shitty plan formed when she can't run anymore.  She prays there’s enough fluid to at least keep her friends safe. That her favorite torch just might help save something instead of stealing it.

The walls are echoing around her and she squashes the feeling to vomit while she flames the stupid suitcase, doing her best to keep it away from her mouth. She can hold her breath for 3 minutes on a good day. But she’s already run and been kissed breathless and she wishes she could have told Hardison that she loved him or what she was planning but she was thief.

She was going to die like a thief. That was something she had accepted a long time ago.

His arms are around her before she realizes that’s it’s done. It’s over with. She’s alive and Hardison’s alive and Eliot’s probably bleeding, but alive and now she can breathe. In and out. The lungs draw oxygen into the body and to the brain- They can do anything together. She might have known it before but now it echoes inside of her like Alec’s screams inside the tunnel.

Alec is talking to her but she can barely breathe let alone understand him, he’s squeezing her so hard. _“I can’t lose you.”_

**

_Hardison_

“Damnit Hardison!”

He really doesn’t care if he bumps Eliot into every bump in the tunnel. Might just drop him on purpose because of amazingly stupid he was. There was a reason he was the brains. He didn’t get shot, or hurt and hauling two-hundred pounds of Eliot down a subway tunnel was just the highlight of his particularly crappy shitty ass day.

The paramedics are at the end of the tunnel, and they’ve got a gurney.

Parker’s fingers are in his hand before he can even reach for her, “Let’s go to France. Spain. Anywhere.”

He would. He would go anywhere with her and that was beginning to scare him. “Let’s just spackle Eliot back together and go home.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He doesn’t let go of her hand the entire way to the airport.

Or through security.

Or boarding the plane.

His master plan was one day becoming Nate but somehow after everything they’d been through, he didn’t think it was possible. He might be a decent grifter and a good thief but in every scenario he can think of they would have died. The three of them in a blaze of nasty old disease. And that really bothers him because the two of them figured out a way for all of them to live. Even if Parker might have died in the process. And they were so normal about it. Parker was talking about all the people they could spy on with his uplink to the government servers, Eliot was attempting to video chat Nate with what happened and he just wanted to scream.

“Ooh look, Sterling just left Portland.”

“What? NATE? STERLING!?” “We’re both fine. Soph and I just got arrested once. And stole a few paintings.”

_“I love you. And I know something like this will happen again and one day someone might not make it back but we’re going to get stronger and wiser and more thiefy and it won’t happen anytime soon.”_

That’s what Parker should have said. That’s what a normal person would have said. But Parker is not normal she’s broken and special and his. He should quit expecting her to be different.

Instead she sleeps against his shoulder and wakes up on the descent into Portland. She tosses Eliot’s watch back to him without opening her eyes and grabs his suitcase. They parked Lucille 3 in short-term parking but she’s putting Eliot into a taxi and dangles his keys in front of them.

“You switched pockets. You never switch pockets. That’s how I knew something was wrong.”

She drives them downtown past the brewpub and to an apartment building off Main Street. He didn’t really understand what was going on until she led him to an empty apartment, and entered her actual apartment through a fake coat closet. She hugs him close to her and all he can think about is how he probably smells because he hasn't showered in forever but she has a way of catching him off guard when she's not even trying.

“I’m here.”  He doesn’t understand what she’s saying but it sounds like a promise. “I’m always here.”


End file.
